Fans Of Faye – Designed To Be

There’s something inspiring about a band who spend years and years sharpening their collective tools before applying them to a finished, recorded product. Stourbridge’s Fans Of Faye have been a band for eight years now, and Designed To Be is their debut full length tasked with showing what they have learned in that length of time.

Designed To Be shows off the kind of youthful exuberance you would expect from a band with an average age of 22, but it would be a disservice to the band to suggest this is all the record has to offer. There’s a level of maturity here in the song writing that shows the band left the honeymoon period a long time ago. The eponymous opening track lures you in gently, ensuring it has your attention before things kick off with uplifting, delicate guitars providing a backdrop to the emphatic vocals of Zachary Hart.

It’s a promising opening track that lays down the marker for what’s to come, but the beauty of this record is its ability to bloom as it progresses. ‘Reckless’ shows a grittier side of the band, a track that takes you in all kinds of directions, held together by a great chorus, while ‘Are You Finished?’ has all the hallmarks of a typical modern British rock song (think Mallory Knox but with a bit more aplomb). Zachary’s vocals are a fantastic focal point for the band and this is exercised with devastating effects in ‘Bloodshed’, a slow burner that hits a truly awesome climax. His voice is fundamental to the sound of the band, akin to the likes of Jordan Spiers (Flood of Red) at times, becoming instantly familiar, lodged in your head like a wedge.

The record’s finest moment comes in the wonderful ‘Handlebars’, a crescendo that builds up similarly to Temper Trap’s ‘Sweet Disposition’ before hitting it’s peak, developing in to a track that will take some beating as the bands career progresses. It’s a shame that Designed To Be veers off a little towards the tail end of the record. The aforementioned ‘Handlebars’ would have been the perfect parting shot, and perhaps this record is a couple of tracks too long. It’s a negative aspect to the album that can be easily forgiven, as Designed To Be is as impressive a début album as any in the modern crop of pop rock bands in the UK.